Tax Increase For Some In Potential Washington Township School Budget

LONG VALLEY, NJ — The Washington Township School District presented its proposed school budget for 2023–24 on Tuesday night, which includes a tax increase for some town residents.

The local school district also recently had a reduction in state aid this year, amounting to a total decrease of $467,500, or 11.26 percent, for the 2023–24 school year.

The proposed budget of $46,390,895 for the 2023-24 school year is a decrease of.6 percent over the 2022-23 budget, which was roughly $46,664,904.

"We continued to take, what I would consider to be a strategic approach with building our budget, similar to what we did a year ago. In the face of a reduction in aid, we still feel like it's very important that we are making strategic investments in our schools, our staff, our leaders and our facilities," Superintendent of the Washington Township School District Peter Turnamian said.

For an average homeowner in Washington Township with a home assessed at $439,258 they would see a tax increase of $137 per year.

According to Turnamian, the tax levy is increasing by 2.68 percent for the upcoming school year.

The school board pointed to a number of factors for the increase in the tax levy, including inflation and the state aid reduction.

Turnamian said that while the district was once again losing money, he believes that the worst of the district's financial problems are already over. For example, last year, the school district lost more than $1 million in state aid, which resulted in a larger-scale district restructuring.

"I feel confident in saying that a lot of the hard stuff is behind us right now, specific to our state aid reduction. That's some generally good news in the sense that we have moved beyond that," Turnamian said.

To compensate for the reduction in the school budget, officials said, one quint section at the middle school will be eliminated, as will a guidance administrative assistant position that had never been filled. The final elimination is of one full-time employee from the middle school, who is a retired employee.

"We're not anticipating any other impact to our staffing across our district with this new budget, and while we are still making the hard choices around solving for the reduction in state aid," Turnamian said.

The school board meeting coincided with the election for the school district's $28.8 million referendum. The referendum, which called for significant renovations to all district-wide schools, was unofficially approved by the majority of Long Valley voters on March 14.

One resident questioned whether the recently passed referendum would have an impact on the tentative school budget and whether not passing the referendum would have given the school more money.

Turnamian responded by clarifying that the referendum's outcome would have no direct impact on the future school budget, whether it passed or not.